CITIES ALLIANCE PROJECT
ON PRO-POOR SLUM UPGRADING
FRAMEWORK FOR MUMBAI, INDIA
FINAL REPORT
SUBMITTED
TO
CITIES ALLIANCE
AND
UNITED NATIONS (HABITAT)
BY
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF AREA RESOURCE CENTRES
(SPARC)
January 2004
INDEX
FOREWORD 3
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 4
List of Acronyms 5
INTRODUCTION 6
3. About Mumbai 10
Mobilisation Strategies And Community Management Tools 11
Engagement with the State 19
Financial Strategies And Slum Upgradation Frameworks 25
3.2.1.5 C. House repair loans: 26
Policy and Legislative Reforms 36
ACTION PLAN 40
FOREWORD
The first draft of this Report was submitted to UN Habitat in October 2003. After receiving comments from Habitat and others, it has been revised.
As in all our writings, even if authorship is attributed to the persons named below, this document represents an articulation of the shared and collective experience of Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC), National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF) and Mahila Milan. The ideas and views of Sheela Patel, Director, SPARC, A.Jockin, President, NSDF and Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI), and Celine D’Cruz, Associate Director, SPARC, all find resonance in the contents.
We hope that this report throws some light on the complexities of the Mumbai context.
Sundar Burra and Devika Mahadevan
Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC)
Khetwadi Municipal School Building
Khetwadi Lane-1, Girgaon, Mumbai 400 004
Telephone Nos.: (91 22) 2386-5053 / 2385-8785 / 2380-1266
Telefax Nos.: (91 22) 2388 7566
Email: sparc@vsnl.in
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This paper is a part of the 3 Cities Project that documents the experiences, frameworks and practices in slum upgradation in the cities of Mumbai, Manila and Durban. The aim of this project is to share lessons, challenges and methodologies that emerge from city-wide slum upgradation efforts and support those initiatives where local and national governments work in partnership with groups of the urban poor.
In fact, this document is being written at a very exciting time for the city of Mumbai. In August 2003, the Government of Maharashtra made a presentation to the Prime Minister of India suggesting policy and legislative changes that would result in massive slum upgradation in the city. Around the same time, Bombay First, a citizen’s initiative, along with McKinsey, a private consulting company, produced a report called Vision Mumbai: Transferring Mumbai into a world-class city. This report has generated much interest and a Task Force has been set up by the state government to scrutinize and examine Bombay First-McKinsey’s recommendations. In fact, the Alliance is a member of a “Housing for All” sub-committee that will make recommendations to the Task Force. All these very welcome initiatives are representative of a genuine will to improve the face of Mumbai, of which making the city slum-free is an important component. However, these are top-down approaches, and the authors believe that unless the urban poor are organised, they will be unable to benefit from policy and legislative change in any significant way. This document illustrates a number of grassroots examples that demonstrate how communities can be involved in the upgrading of their slums and presents a bottom-up perspective to scaling up city development.
The paper is structured as follows. The introduction reviews the main arguments of the paper, introduces the Alliance and provides some data on the urban poor in Mumbai. The first chapter presents the mobilisation strategies of the Alliance. The next chapter discusses the emphasis the Alliance places on precedent setting activities and also presents its engagement strategies. The third chapter discusses the Alliance’s financial strategies, the current framework of slum redevelopment policy in Mumbai, and presents a financial model that demonstrates that the poor are creditworthy and how financial institutions can support community-led slum upgradation initiatives. The fourth chapter presents the legislative and policy reform frameworks necessary for slum upgradation to be taken up at the city-wide level. Finally, the document ends with a City Action Plan.
In conclusion, the authors maintain that there is much to be optimistic about. What is important is the city’s genuine will to support organisations of the urban poor, nurture private-public-NGO partnerships, and ensure that the market is truly friendly to the poor.
List of Acronyms
BUDP Bombay Urban Development Project
CBO Community Based Organisation
CLIFF Community-Led Infrastructure Financing Facility
CRZ Coastal Regulations Zone
EWS Economically Weaker Sections
FSI Floor Space Index
GOI Government of India
GOM Government of Maharashtra
LIG Low Income Group
LISP Low Income Shelter Programme
MHADA Mumbai Housing and Area Development Authority
MMRDA Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority
MOEF Ministry of Environment and Forests
MUIP Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project
MUTP Mumbai Urban Transport Project
NDZ No Development Zone
NGO Non Government Organisation
NSDF National Slum Dwellers Federation
NSDP National Slum Development Programme
RSDF Railway Slum Dwellers Federation
SDI Shack Dwellers International
SJSRY Swarn Jayanti Rojgar Yojana
SPARC Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres
SRA Slum Rehabilitation Authority
SRD Slum Redevelopment Scheme
SUP Slum Upgradation Programme
TDR Transferable Development Rights
VAMBAY Valmiki Ambedkar Yojana – a housing subsidy programme
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